Devil You Know
by rebecca-in-blue
Summary: "Eponine had heard the old saying, the devil you know beats the devil you don't. Her father was the devil she knew." Eponine growing up, and her life growing worse.
1. There's a cross above the baby's bed

Dear Readers - At this time last year, I was writing _Always_ , a long-ish story about Cosette's childhood and relationship with her father. This story is about the same subject, but for Eponine - so of course, it's darker, grittier, and a lot less fluffy. I haven't written much Eponine-centric work, but the more I think about her, the more interesting she becomes. How did she grow up to be a good person when she was raised by two such horrible parents? That's one of the questions that I'll attempt to answer in this story. As always, I hope you'll enjoy, and any feedback means so much.

The title comes from a song in the musical _Side Show_ , originally performed on Broadway by Norm Lewis, one of my favorite Javerts. :)

For my own reference: 101st fanfiction, 24th story for _Les Miserables_.

* * *

When Eponine was seven, her father made her drink alcohol for the first time.

Even at that young age, she already had a vague understanding that she wasn't like other girls, and that her parents weren't like other parents. She knew, from playing with the other children in Montfermeil, that they weren't allowed to do certain things, that they were punished if they misbehaved, that they were expected to help out around the house. But Eponine was allowed to do practically anything that she liked, from eating sweets for dinner to staying up late. Mama and Papa never disciplined her or made her do any chores. They made Cosette do all the chores at their inn.

Sometimes, Papa and his friends had parties in the little tavern of their inn - loud parties that lasted late into the night, where all the men laughed and banged their beer-mugs on the bar and sang songs off-key. The noise always woke Eponine up, but she never minded this, for she liked to go downstairs and wander around the party. She would watch the men arm-wrestle and listen to them tell jokes or sing songs, and since her father was the owner of the inn, they were all nice to her and gave her bits of whatever food they were eating that night.

Like most little girls, Eponine adored her papa. After all, why shouldn't she? He was always sweet to her, kissing her and tickling her, and Eponine felt certain that he knew everything there was to know in the world, like how to trick people out of their money. He'd recently begun teaching his tricks to Eponine, and she was very good at them. _My little girl_ , Papa called her proudly.

"Eponine! So we woke my little girl up, did we?" Papa always exclaimed when he spotted her wandering through his party. He never made her go back to bed, and he never made his friends quiet down so that she could sleep. He just scooped her up, planted a few slobbery kisses on her lips, and sat her down on his lap or on the bar, where she could see everything.

One of Papa's friends had a tattoo of a lady on his burly arm, and when he wiggled his arm just so, the lady seemed to be dancing. He would always make the lady dance for Eponine. Another one of his friends would act so funny after even one mug of beer, tripping over his own feet and bumping into things, and that made her laugh, too. She tried to stay up and enjoy the loud, exciting atmosphere, but eventually the smell of beer grew so strong that it made her dizzy and tired and she fell asleep, either stretched out on the bar or curled up on the floor at Papa's feet, while the raucous party carried on around her.

After the party was over, if Papa didn't drink too much, he remembered to carry Eponine upstairs and put her back in her bed. But often he forgot, and she woke up the next morning still in the tavern, which was now quiet and empty and littered with dirty beer-mugs. She loved sitting on the bar during parties, but the tricky thing was that if she fell asleep there, she might roll off during the night, falling to the floor with a hard bump that made her cry. If she fell asleep on the floor beneath Papa's bar stool, the men might accidentally spill their beer on her, but she didn't mind that so much.

She always wandered through the party barefoot, wearing nothing but her nightgown, and one particularly chaotic night, one of Papa's friends accidentally pushed a knife off a table. It bounced to the floor and cut Eponine's foot. It hurt and she cried, but somebody bound the cut up tightly in a handkerchief, and Papa just shrugged and said, "Eh, there's no harm done. Accidents'll happen." Even then, he didn't say that a wild tavern party was no place for a little girl, and he continued letting her wander in and out among the tables in her nightgown.

One night, when Papa spotted her, he held his mug aloft and exclaimed, "Gather 'round, my pissed-as-newts! My little girl's about to wet her whistle for the first time!" He sat down on his bar stool and scooped her up into his lap. "Don't worry now, Eponine, you'll do fine," he whispered in her ear, his voice a bit slurred, as all the men cheered and gathered around them to watch. "Remember, you're a Thenardier, so there's beer in your blood. Hell, you were practically baptized in beer."

Eponine liked being the center of attention, so when he held his mug up to her lips, she drank. The taste was bitter, but she liked how it fizzled and tickled her nose, so she drank down a big gulp and smiled.

Papa fist-pumped the air, and all the men clapped their hands as if she'd done something wonderful. "Yes! That's my _girl_!" Papa yelled, and he covered her lips and face in his wet, beery kisses until she giggled. Then he shifted her from his lap to the bar, told his friends that he had to "break the seal," and he stumbled away towards the back door.

But after Papa's back was turned, one of his friends - Eponine didn't know his name - pulled her roughly into his lap. "Say, Thenardier, can I give her a bit more?" he called to Papa's retreating back, and Papa waved a hand and said, "Yeah, all right, jes' not too much."

The man smiled in the same sly way that Eponine smiled whenever she was up to something naughty. He dipped two fingers into his beer, swirled them around, and then, without warning, he pulled them out and thrust them into Eponine's mouth.

She jerked, startled, and tried to squirm away, but his other arm squeezed tight around her waist, holding her in place. "Come on, now, girly, you liked beer a minute ago," he whispered, wiggling his fingers deeper into Eponine's mouth. "Just suck it off my fingers now, and I'll let you go. I know you want to."

She _didn't_ want to. His fingers were dirty and big, so big that she almost gagged on them, and she hated him for shoving them inside her mouth. But she _did_ want him to release her, and so she closed her eyes and sucked on them. The mixed taste of beer and dirt was disgusting in her mouth.

"That's right," the man said, chuckling low in his throat. "Suck 'em harder, now. You want to get all that beer off, don't you?" But even after she had sucked all of the beer off his fingers and swallowed it down, he still didn't remove them from her mouth. He turned to the man sitting on the bar stool next to him and said, "Looky here, Thenardier's gal can already suck off _and_ swallow. _She_ 's going to make some man happy when she's bigger, all right."

They both roared with laughter, and Eponine didn't know what was so funny or why she suddenly felt so dirty. She decided to bite him, to bite down right on his fingers as hard as she could, but before she could do it, he had pulled his fingers out of her mouth. She slid off his lap to the floor and hurried straight to the back door, to find Papa and tell him what his friend had just done. She was certain that her papa would be furious, that he would march right back into the tavern and yell at that man and throw him out, and maybe even punch him, too. Eponine smiled to imagine that. She hoped that Papa would punch him _hard_.

But when she found Papa, he was bent double in the alley behind their inn, vomiting hard into the rubbish bin. Eponine could tell that he'd just peed against the wall, for his trousers were still undone, and she knew that it would do no good to tell him anything now. He was much too drunk and sick. He didn't even notice her as she stood there watching him, and after a moment, she turned away, angry and disappointed in him, and she crept back upstairs to her bed without saying a word.


	2. A savior in her dreams

Dear Readers - I'd like to share a little more about my inspiration for this story. I wrote it partly as a companion piece to _Always_ , and also because I see so many stories on this site that are Marius/Eponine or Enjolras/Eponine, but very few stories about her relationship with her father (who would've shaped her more than anyone) and even fewer about Eponine _herself_ , independent of any man. I feel that Cosette often gets slighted in the same way, and I've written several stories trying to flesh out her character. I hope that I can do the same with Eponine here.

Many thanks to everyone who's reviewed!

* * *

When Eponine was eight, she and her father struck each other for the first time.

By then, her family was living in Claye-Souilly. They'd had to leave their old inn in Montfermeil very suddenly one night - Eponine never knew exactly why, but it had something to do with one of their guests turning out to be a policeman's brother - and they'd moved to Claye-Souilly, a smaller town very far away, or so it seemed to Eponine. Their new house was so small that Eponine couldn't have her own room, but she didn't mind that so much. She slept on a comfortable little mattress on the parlor floor, except during the wintertime, when the parlor grew so cold at night that Mama and Papa moved her mattress to the floor of their room.

Eponine had to do chores here too, for the first time in her life, for Cosette wasn't there to do all the chores anymore. Last winter, an old man had come to their inn and taken Cosette away with him. But Eponine had never paid much mind to Cosette, and she rarely ever thought about her anymore. She didn't like having to do chores, but she still found time to play with the little boys in Claye-Souilly.

She had never really played with other girls, nor did she want to. Girls were always playing the silliest sorts of games - jacks, and tea parties with their dolls, and things like that. Eponine preferred rough-and-tumble games, and she could run and throw balls and climb trees as well as any boy her age. The boys in Claye-Souilly accepted her as one of them, and they taught her how to tie a string around the tail of a dead rat and swing it in circles above her head. It sent all the other little girls running away shrieking, but Eponine liked it.

She knew that her papa had some sort of new job here, because he was always leaving the house to go somewhere, but Eponine wasn't allowed to know what his job was. Papa explained that she couldn't blab anything that she didn't know. He'd also explained, right after they arrived, that their name wasn't _Thenardier_ anymore. It was now _Camus_.

When they first arrived in Claye-Souilly, Papa had sat her down and made her say her new name, Eponine Camus, over and over again. It would help her to remember, he said. After she'd repeated it many times, Papa said slowly, "That's my good little girl. Now, tell me one last time, Eponine, what was our old name?"

She was glad to finally have something else to say. She smiled and began, "Thenar-"

Papa slapped her, hard, across the face.

It was so fast and unexpected that Eponine didn't even have time to cry out. She recovered slowly, raising her head and staring at Papa open-mouthed. The side of her face that he'd just struck was stinging painfully, but Eponine felt far more shocked than hurt. Papa yelled at her sometimes, when he was drunk, but he'd never hit her before.

Before she could say anything, he grabbed her roughly and pulled her into his arms. "My little girl didn't like that, did she?" he asked, mussing her hair and laughing a bit. "Sorry, Eponine, but I had to do it. It'll stop you from saying our old name by mistake."

She was still too shocked and hurt to answer him, but she rubbed the sore side of her face and gave him her meanest glare. For the first time in a long time, she remembered Cosette, the miserable little lark from their inn. She had seen both Papa and Mama strike Cosette so many times, and she'd never felt sorry for her or even thought much about it, for never before had it occurred to her how much it must have _hurt_. She rubbed her face again, and for really the first time in her life, she felt guilty and ashamed of herself.

* * *

Eponine didn't like being hit, of course, but it did work. Once she nearly gave their old name to a shopkeeper, but then she remembered the sharp sting of Papa's hand across her cheek, and she caught herself.

* * *

It seemed to her that Mama and Papa argued more here than they had in Montfermeil. One very cold winter night, Eponine was asleep on the floor of their room, and their shouting woke her up. Papa had just come home very late, and Mama wouldn't let him into their bed.

"Just tell me why you reek of cheap perfume!" Mama kept yelling. "You've been with some whore, haven't you? Haven't you!"

"You think I've got money to afford a whore?" Papa tried to protest. "Hell, the only reason I married _you_ was so I wouldn't have to pay for whores anymore!"

"Get out!" Mama screeched. She threw something at Papa, who swore and must have ducked out of the way, because Eponine heard the something bounce off the wall and fall to the floor, landing quite near her. "You think I don't know when you're lying? You've been with some whore tonight, so you can sleep in the parlor! Now get out!"

Eponine listened to all this, but she kept her eyes closed and pretended to still be asleep. Papa had taught her all about pretending and lying, and she was very good at it. She thought that they had forgotten that she was there - they certainly weren't keeping their voices down for fear of waking her up - and she was caught off-guard when Papa suddenly said, "Fine. But if I'm sleeping in the parlor, I want Eponine. I'll need something to keep me warm, unless you'd like to wake up tomorrow morning and find me frozen to the floor."

"Well then, take her, if you want her so much. I don't care. Just get out!"

Papa huffed angrily, then turned and bent over her mattress. Eponine fought and tried to push him away, but he was too fast and strong for her. He overcame her struggles with ease and in no time, he'd scooped her up out of bed, blankets and all.

"No! Put me down!" she yelled and kicked her legs as he carried her towards the door. But Papa ignored her, so she appealed to Mama, pleading, "Mama, don't make me sleep in the parlor, it's too cold out there." But Mama ignored her call for help. Over Papa's shoulder, Eponine saw her hunker down beneath the blankets of her own comfortable bed.

"Well, of course it is, Eponine," Mama answered, her tone was just as mean as when she'd spoken to Papa. "That's why he needs you to keep warm. Stop carrying on so, it isn't going to kill you."

Eponine's heart burned with the unfairness of it all. _She_ was being punished, even though she hadn't done anything wrong! It made her so angry that she balled up one fist and punched Papa's shoulder as hard as she could. His eyes flashed very dangerously at her for a second, but then he just laughed his rough laugh and held her even closer against him, so tightly that it hurt.

"So, my little girl didn't want to get out of bed, did she? Well, I don't blame you, 'Ponine, but on a night like this, I need a gal to keep me warm, and since your ma won't do it, it's gotta be you. You bes' get used to it."

He took her into the parlor and reached into his coat pocket. Eponine brightened a bit when he pulled out a skinny, long-necked bottle. She could usually predict Papa's moods based on what he drank. A tall bottle with with a long neck meant beer, which was good. She could drink sips of beer, and it often set Papa drunk in a silly, pleasant way. Papa could be so sweet to her when he was happy-drunk. He would tickle her and kiss her lips. But a short, flat bottle - a _flask_ , he called it - meant a harder drink, usually whiskey or liquor, which was bad. It was too strong for her to drink, and it set Papa into a mean, nasty drunkenness. Eponine knew to stay out of his way when he had a flask in his hand.

Now, Papa held the beer bottle up to her lips and said, "Here, this'll warm yer blood. Drink up," and she did. The bare stone floor of the parlor was dirty and cold, but Papa took his coat off and spread it out. He laid down on it with Eponine and arranged her blankets over both of them. Eponine was still furious with Papa for yanking her out of bed, but her coldness won out over her anger, and she burrowed her body in close against his, desperate for his warmth. She couldn't smell any of the cheap perfume that Mama had screamed about, but it was hard to smell anything over the beer. Papa just laughed again and pinched her cheeks hard, which made her hate him even more.

"So, my little girl's not so tough now, is she?" he teased. "Yeah, you better just keep me warm and shut up about it, understand?" And with that, he kissed her lips a few times, threw one heavy arm over her, and fell asleep. They spent the night that way, their bodies twined together on the floor, and her father breathed so much of his beery breath onto her that the smell of it clung to Eponine's dark hair for days.


	3. But she was not delivered then

_Merci beaucoup_ to everyone who's left feedback. Your reviews really tie the room together. :)

* * *

When Eponine was nine, she caught a terrible case of the flu.

It started out as a simple cough after playing outside one winter day, but by the next morning, she ached all over and still shivered even when she wrapped herself up in blankets. Mama made her a bowl of soup, but she threw it up and spent all afternoon in her bed, shivering and coughing. Mama wiped her face down with a cold cloth and pulled Papa into a corner. Eponine heard them talking in hushed, serious voices, but she couldn't make out their words.

Papa left to go somewhere - Eponine heard the door open and close - and came back later that evening with a big wooden crate, the kind that farmers used to take their vegetables to market. He set it on the floor, then walked over to Eponine's bed, pulled his flask from his pocket, uncorked it, and held it up to her lips.

He'd given her sips of his drinks before, of course, but never anything as hard as liquor. The smell made her even more nauseous, and she tried to turn her face away, but Papa held her head still with one hand, so that she couldn't.

"Be a good little girl and drink up now, 'Ponine," he ordered. "Hold your nose and it won't burn so much going down." She drank a big gulp, but even though she held her nose, it still burned. Her throat was already sore, and now it felt like it was on fire. Eponine hung her head, miserable, and wanted to cry.

She was startled when Papa picked her up and plunked her down inside the big crate on the floor. "Lie down, now, and keep quiet, understand?" he said, as he threw a blanket over her.

Eponine obeyed, for she felt too sick to argue or try and figure out what Papa was doing. The crate smelled unpleasantly of onions and it was a tight fit, but if she curled up into a little ball, then she could just lie down on the bottom. She pulled the blanket over her head and closed her eyes, and it felt a bit nice, to just lie here and wish that the rest of the world would go away.

She felt Papa pick up the crate and leave the house. She didn't know where they were going as he walked down the street with her, but she didn't care. The liquor was already making her dizzy and tired. She could hear him and Mama arguing above her head, but their voices were strange and muffled, as if they came from very far away.

"You bloody fool," Mama said, "what makes you think this'll work? What makes you think they'll even treat her?"

"Don't argue with me, woman." Papa and Mama never called each other by name. "It's a _charity_ hospital. They _have_ to treat her. And besides, nuns are some of the stupidest people on earth. Trust me, they'll think if they don't treat her, they'll go straight to hell."

 _Straight to hell._ Those were the last words that Eponine heard before the liquor pulled her under, and they seemed to bounce around in her muddled mind as she fell asleep. _Straight to hell. Straight to hell._

* * *

Eponine heard strange voices talking to her and felt strange hands touching her. She tried to move away from them, but her limbs were too heavy and sluggish. Her eyelids felt like they'd been glued shut, but with a great effort, she pried them open.

She startled when she saw the nuns around her. Eponine had never seen nuns up close before, and they were a little frightening, all peering down at her and all dressed alike in their strange, dark habits. They had lifted her out of the crate and laid her down on a hard table that smelled strange and too clean. Everything was strange and too clean here, and Eponine felt as if she had been dropped into some sort of alien world.

The nuns poked and prodded and asked her a lot of questions. Eponine told them that she was nine when they asked her age, and she nearly answered when they asked her name and where she lived, but she stopped herself just in time. She had a feeling that Papa didn't want her telling these nuns anything about herself or her family. He hadn't said so, but sometimes, he didn't need to say something for Eponine to hear it. So she kept quiet when they asked where she'd come from, and when they persisted, she launched into a bout of coughing so harsh that they forgot their questions. Papa had taught her all about keeping secrets and changing the subject, and she was very good at it.

A doctor came in, an old man wearing a long black coat and carrying a little black bag. The nuns spoke with him in hushed voices - "...left on the front steps in an onion crate... really very sick..." - and then they stood her up and presented her to him. He poked and prodded even more, feeling her face, neck, and chest, and peering into her eyes and mouth.

"Do you know how to read, child?" the doctor asked. Eponine didn't know what that had to do with her being sick, but she nodded. He squeezed her arm with one hand and pointed behind her with the other. "Good. Can you read that?" She looked around to where he was pointing. On the opposite wall was a little plaque with a crucifix and some prayer that she didn't know.

But then, she didn't know _any_ prayers. Her parents had never once taken her to church or taught her anything about praying.

"Read me what it says," the doctor prompted.

Eponine squinted and leaned closer. She could read well enough, but the print was small and hard to see from this distance. "Um, it says... _May all who pray for healing find_ \- OW!" Suddenly she felt the most terrible, painful prick on her arm, just above where the doctor was holding it. She spun around to see him drawing a _needle_ out of her arm with a syringe. He had stuck her with a needle! Eponine gasped, shocked, and tried to jerk away from him, but one of the nuns grabbed her and held her still.

"There, that wasn't so bad, was it?" he asked, dabbing at the sore spot on her arm.

Eponine seethed and bared her teeth at him like a dog. She could not remember ever feeling so angry. He had tricked her _on purpose_ , she realized - tricked into looking away to read some silly prayer so that he could stick her with his needle! Her throat was still sore, but she was so angry that she screamed anyway. She looked that doctor right in the eye and screamed the naughtiest thing that she could think of, her father's favorite insult and one of her favorites, too.

"Horse's ass!"

Everyone gasped. The doctor's eyes bulged as wide and round as two plates. One of the nuns exclaimed, "Jesus, Mary, and Holy St. Joseph!" Another one crossed herself and said, "Lord, we beseech you to have mercy upon this sinner." And a third pressed her hand to her forehead, as if she might faint dead away. It was all very silly of them, Eponine thought. They acted as if the words _horse's ass_ were so terrible, when they weren't. She heard her parents say far worse things all the time.

The nuns decided that they couldn't put her in the ward with the other sick children. "She's a perfect heathen," one said. "She'll be a bad influence and corrupt them, and we can't have the corruption of innocent souls on our hands." They decided to put her alone in an empty extra room that they'd used during a tuberculosis outbreak. "But she needs a good scrub first," another one said, sniffing her nose disdainfully. Eponine supposed that she smelled of onions, from being in the crate. "And look her over for lice and ticks. Merciful heavens, she's filthy."

 _I am not,_ Eponine wanted to retort angrily. She had taken a bath just last week. But her throat felt too sore to say this, so she had to settle for giving the woman her meanest glare. Then two nuns took her hands and led her away to a smaller room with a bathtub.

Eponine had taken baths before, of course, but only when _she_ wanted to. Mama and Papa had never forced her to take one, even when she got dirty, and they had never bathed her, either. Eponine had another rude shock when one nun began to undress her while the other one filled the tub. She squirmed and struggled, but she was too weak and sick to put up much resistance.

"Now, child, don't make this harder on yourself," one of them said firmly when she tried to bat her hands away. "Being clean will help you to get well again." And the other nun, who looked very sour and cross, said, "She acts as if she's never been bathed before. I declare, I've never seen such a wicked child."

She called them bitches, and she would have called them worse, but they said that they would wash her mouth out with the soap if she swore again, so she fell silent. If only she had been well, she would have told them that she was quite old enough to bathe herself. She would have screeched and kicked and fought. She would have shown them what a wicked child _really_ looked like. But the fever had crushed her strong spirit and made her docile, so she simply sat in the tub, sick and stiff and furious, while the nuns rolled up their sleeves and scrubbed away at her. They scoured her with their brushes, lathered her up in soap suds, then rinsed them away with water. They combed her hair to check for lice and examined the rest of her for ticks, neither of which she had.

Eponine hated every second of this ordeal, but the nuns only shushed her when she tried to protest. When they were finally done, she wanted to put her own dress back on, but they wouldn't let her. Instead they dressed her in a thin hospital gown - it smelled funny and was too short for her - then made her swallow two spoonfuls of some nasty medicine. The sour-looking nun took her to an long, empty room lined with long, empty beds and put her in the bed nearest the door.

"I told Sister Marie-Patrice that we ought to take a switch to your backside for cursing, but luckily for you, she doesn't believe in using a switch on sick children," she said, bundling the blankets around her so tightly that she could barely move. It felt very strange. Eponine could not remember either of her parents ever once tucking her in. "But mark my words, some good strong discipline is just what you need."

She was so mean that it should have felt good to be rid of her, but it didn't. Eponine felt even worse after she left. The door closed behind her with a heavy _thump_ that echoed up and down the long, empty room and made Eponine shudder. She was very weak, but she fought her way out from under the tight covers. Her legs swayed and shook when she stood up, but she slowly crossed the room to the window on the opposite wall. She gripped the windowsill to steady herself and stared down at the street below her.

Eponine stared so intently out of the window that she forgot all about the cold shudders in her legs and the painful rattle in her chest. She nearly jumped out of her skin when a voice behind her suddenly shrieked, "Merciful heavens!"

Eponine whirled around. It was a nun who'd come to check on her. "Child, what on earth are you doing out of bed? Do you want to make yourself even worse?" She took Eponine's hand and led her back to bed, chattering and scolding all the way. She tucked her in tightly again, felt her forehead, and fussed over her, but Eponine barely even noticed, for she was still thinking about what she'd just seen out the window. She had looked up and down the street as far as she could, and she'd not seen one building that she recognized. She felt frightened, lost, and very far from home.

Where was this hospital that Papa had taken her to? She didn't know of any charity hospital in Claye-Souilly. Was she in another town now? What if Papa never came back to get her? How would she ever find her way home?


	4. And the baby became me

I know it's been a wait since the last update to this story. Thank you all for your patience. Virtual milk and cookies to the reader who can tell me where the chapter titles come from - but no cheating!

* * *

Eponine could not be sure just how long she stayed in the hospital with the nuns, for her illness made the time drag, but it felt like a very long time.

The sour nun said that if she got out of bed again, they would get another blanket and swaddle her up like they did the babies, so that she couldn't move an inch, and if she swore or spoke out of turn again, they would wash her mouth out with soap. Eponine didn't want that to happen, so she laid in bed and tried to be as still and quiet as possible. Her fever made this quite easy. She was very tired and getting out of bed had made her feel even worse. Whenever she coughed, her whole body shook as if she might break apart. She dozen on and off for long periods.

Nuns came in regularly to check on her. They woke her and propped her up in bed, groggy and half-awake, to take more medicine or drink more water. They took her temperature, and if she was too hot, they changed her gown and wiped her face and body down with cold cloths. They held hot spoonfuls of broth and bits up bread up to her mouth and coaxed her - "Be a good girl, now, and eat just a little" - and even though Eponine didn't have any appetite, she ate just to make them leave her alone. It was hard to tell the nuns apart, because they all dressed alike, and Eponine didn't bother trying to learn their names, but gradually, she recognized that some of them could be very kind.

One day, that hateful doctor came to see her again. He snuck up on her while she was facing the other way, or she would've started screaming as soon as she saw him coming. He had the nuns roll her onto her side, and then he pulled her gown right up and gave her a suppository, which was almost as bad as the shot.

The hospital was such a strange place, so very different from home. During the daytime, it wasn't so bad. There was always a hum of noise from the hallway outside her room, nuns hurrying past, talking and giving orders. When she was awake, Eponine would watch the patches of sunlight move across the floor and up the walls as the hours slipped by. Her thoughts wandered, and for the first time in a long time, she remembered Cosette, the girl who used to live with them, and she made up stories in her head about what might have happened to Cosette since the old man had taken her away.

But the hospital grew quieter at night, and the silence and darkness made her big, empty room feel even bigger. Eponine had never scared easily, but it was so frightening to be there by herself. The nuns still came to check on her, but their visits felt further apart during the night. She sweated into the sheets, and tossed and turned, and dreamed strange, feverish dreams.

One night, she had a terrible, vivid dream about being chased through the woods by a bear. She was dizzy and wobbly because Papa had given too much of his beer again, and she couldn't run fast enough, and she just knew that the bear would catch her and crush her bones in his teeth. She woke up wailing and crying and found one of the nuns sitting beside her bed, patting her hand.

"There, there, child," she said gently. Eponine grabbed her cool hand with her own hot, sweaty one, and felt better. The nun leaned over her, wiped her face with a cold cloth, and brushed her disheveled hair away from her face. "You were just having a bad dream, little one. It's common with fever, I'm afraid. I can stay here with you until you fall asleep again. Would you like that?"

Eponine nodded, and the nun smiled and stayed there with her. She patted her hand and sang a soft song about a place of peaceful rest. Eponine didn't understand all the words, but the melody was sweet and the nun's voice was pretty, and the words seemed to drift around in her muddled mind as she fell asleep. _"There is a joy for souls distressed, a balm for every wounded breast, 'tis found above in Heaven."_

* * *

The next morning, for the first time since she'd arrived at the hospital, Eponine felt clear-headed and hungry when she woke up. She was restless, too, her legs itching to get up out of bed. The nice nun from last night returned to check on her, and she took her temperature, listened to her chest, then smiled, and said, "Praise the Lord, child, I think your fever's finally broken!"

The nun said that she would feel even better after she'd had a bath, and she turned the blankets down and scooped Eponine up in her arms. The nuns were all stronger than they looked and could lift her in and out of bed easily. Eponine felt strong enough to walk again - she was sure that her legs wouldn't shake anymore - but she said nothing and let the nun carry her. Part of her had come to like these nuns and the way they took care of her. They couldn't have been more different from her parents.

Eponine was taken back to the bathing-room, undressed, and given another bath, but this one wasn't nearly so unpleasant as the first one. The soap smelled sweet, the hot water did wonders for her sore muscles, and the nuns' gentle scrubbing felt almost like a massage. They brushed her hair for her, redressed her in a clean gown, and took her back to her room. They gave her a bowl of stew to eat in bed, but one warned her, "Don't eat too fast, now. You're not all clear yet, and we don't want it to come back up again."

Eponine was very hungry, but before she grabbed her spoon and began eating, she looked at the nuns and said, "Thank you." Her parents had never taught her to say _please_ or _thank you_ \- they'd taught her nothing about manners at all - but she was so grateful to the nuns for making her well again that some small instinct to goodness came to her naturally.

The nuns looked each other with some surprise when she said _thank you_ , and the nice one smiled proudly at her and said, "You're very welcome, child." The other one said, "Praise the Lord, I think this child might turn out decently yet."

The stew was hot and very good, and Eponine was so focused on eating - it was the first proper meal that she'd been able to eat since she arrived here - that she almost didn't hear what the nuns were whispering about by the door.

"But what's to be done if nobody comes to claim her?" the nice one asked in a hushed voice. "She was left on the front steps in an _onion crate_ , remember?"

"Yes, I know," the other whispered back. "We'll keep her here for as long as we can, I suppose, and try to find her family. Oh, I do pray that we don't have another abandonment case on ours hands. I hated handing that little boy over the orphanage after nobody ever came for him."

Eponine's stomach suddenly soured, as if she might throw up. The spoon slipped from her hands, landing in the near-empty bowl with a loud _plink_. For a long moment, she couldn't breathe, but finally, she found her voice. She turned to the nuns and said loudly, with all the certainty that she could muster, "My papa will come get me!"

The nuns abruptly fell silent. She thought that they would be angry with her for talking out of turn, but the nice one just walked over her bed. "Your papa?" she asked gently, looking down at Eponine with such pity in her eyes. "Is your papa the one who told you not to answer our questions and liquored you up and left you alone on our front steps in the cold?"

Eponine pursed her lips. Was this a trick question? Papa _had_ been the one to do all of those things, but until just now, it had never occurred to Eponine that those weren't things that papas should be doing to their little girls.

The nun sighed and went on, "Child, I've treated sick drunkards who didn't smell of liquor as strongly as you did when we found you. I've tended to bruised women who told me their husbands were good men who didn't really mean it."

Eponine furrowed her brow, and an uneasy feeling spread in the pit of her stomach. She didn't like this nun implying that her papa was a bad man, and she wanted to speak up and defend him, but she was unsure of what to say. _"He's lots of fun when he's drunk"_ somehow sounded wrong. What if this nun was right? What if Papa wasn't a good man? What if he _didn't_ come back to get her? Her eyes suddenly smarted with tears, and she bit her lip hard to keep them from spilling.

She went on, "But perhaps we wouldn't have to send you to the orphanage, if it comes to that. Some other sisters in our order run a convent school for girls near here. We might be able to get you a place there." She patted Eponine's arm gently. "I have a feeling that a little structure would do you a world of good, child."

* * *

That night, Eponine laid awake for a long time, staring at the moonlit shadows on the ceiling, worrying and wondering. _A little structure,_ the nun had said. _Structure_ meant _discipline,_ which Eponine had never really known. She couldn't imagine a life of rules and routines. She didn't _want_ a life like that. Yes, part of her had come to like these nuns and how they took care of her, but she missed the freedom of home. She missed Papa and Mama.

Eponine rolled onto her side and bit her nails until they bled. No, she would never go to any old convent school. Papa loved her, and he would come back to fetch her... wouldn't he?

She was finally drifting off to sleep when the window suddenly slid open, startling her wide awake. But before she even had time to be frightened, a scratchy, familiar voice came through the darkness. " _There_ you are."

Eponine gasped in delight, stood right up in bed, and started to exclaim, "Papa!" but he clapped his hand over her mouth before she could make a sound.

"For fuck's sake, keep quiet," he hissed. It felt so good to Eponine's ears to hear a swear word again. "You all better?" She nodded. "You know how long I been prowlin' around this damn hospital tryin' to find you? Why ain't you in a room with other kids?"

"They said I would be a bad influence on them."

Papa grinned the biggest smile that Eponine had ever seen. "Did they, now?" he asked, chuckling and ruffling up her hair, which one of the nuns had brushed and braided for her before she went to sleep. "That's my girl, Eponine," he praised, and she smiled back at him, happy to have made him so proud of her. "Yeah, you're my daughter, all right. Come on, I'll break you outta here."

She held onto his back quite easily as he slipped back out of the window and climbed down the rain-pipe to the street. Then he set her on the ground, but after they'd walked for a few minutes, he noticed that she was barefoot, wearing only a thin hospital gown. "Eh, can't have you gettin' sick again," he grumbled, and he picked her up and carried her. Eponine's heart gladdened. She was so relieved that Papa had come to get her, so happy that he hadn't abandoned her to those nuns and their convent school. She snuggled up against him, tucking her head under his chin, and breathed in his warm, familiar scent of tobacco and alcohol.

Papa laughed his rough, familiar laugh and pinched her cheeks hard. "Well, well," he said, and his voice was teasing, but not in a mean way like after he'd drunk too much, "so my little girl missed me, did she?" Eponine nodded and wrapped both arms around his neck, and even though Papa was usually only affectionate with her when he was drunk, he kissed her lips and nuzzled her neck.

It was a long walk home, and Eponine was almost asleep against Papa's shoulder when she suddenly remembered the nuns that she'd just left behind. What would they do when they came in to check on her and found her bed empty and her gone? Wouldn't they be worried? She was so glad to be free of that hospital and to be going home with Papa, but she felt guilty for worrying them. They had made her lie still and take baths, but they had made her healthy again, too. She would've liked to tell them _thank you_ and _goodbye_.

When Eponine did fall asleep in her father's arms, she was no longer quite so relieved. Her feelings were now all jumbled-up and confused, and the kind nun's words about her papa echoed inside her head, like a warning.


	5. There's a light inside a darkened room

When Eponine was eleven, her father used her in one of his cons for the first time.

By then, her family was living in Meaux. They had moved away from Claye-Souilly not long after she'd come home from the hospital full of nuns. They traveled by cart, crossed a long bridge over a river, and came to a lonely little village called Jablines. But it was so small that they didn't live there for long. Papa said that people in small towns were too nosy and would catch onto him too quickly. So they'd left it for Meaux, which was the biggest place that Eponine had lived yet.

It was exciting to live in a big city, but she hated moving so much. She said so to Papa when they were packing up their things to leave Jablines, and he'd glared at her and snapped, "Stay here by yourself, then, and see how well you get along without me." Papa had been acting meaner recently, and Eponine didn't understand why.

She knew him well enough to suspect that he was up to no good again, but she didn't realize, at first, that he actually wanted her to help him commit a crime. He made it sound so innocent at first. He sat down next to her one evening while she was eating dinner, sidled up against her, and asked, "Eponine, my girl, you like candy, don't you?"

She nodded. Of course she liked candy, even though she hadn't had any since last Christmas, when some nuns had gone all through the city, giving out candy and little Bibles to the children. Papa said that only fools gave anything away for free, but these nuns didn't seem foolish to Eponine. They seemed kind, like the nuns who'd taken care of her when she was sick, even though she could tell from the habits they wore that these belonged to a different order. When they handed her the candy and the little Bible, she remembered to say, "Thank you, sister," like she'd said when they fed her stew on her last day in the hospital.

The candy was long gone now, of course, but Eponine still had the Bible. "What're you wastin' yer time with _that_ for?" Papa asked, whenever he saw her reading it. "It'll bore you to tears, and besides, it's all bullshit." But Eponine liked it. Yes, some parts of it _were_ very boring, but other parts were exciting; she liked the images in Revelations and the story about Daniel in the lion's den. But most of all, she liked it because she'd found that reading was a way to escape from her own life, and she wanted to escape from that more and more nowadays. Often she wished that she had other books to read besides the Bible, other worlds to escape into.

Papa's question - " _You like candy, don't you?_ " - sounded innocent, but something about the way he asked it reminded Eponine of the snake in the garden, asking Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.

Papa said that his plan was very simple. She was to go to a large shop in a part of the city that she didn't know well, a shop that had a fine candy display, Papa said. He would give her some coins, enough to buy a little bag of candy for herself, and when she took it to the shopkeeper to pay for it, she would spill it all over the counter. She would apologize and try to pick the pieces up, but she would be very clumsy and just knock them further away. That was the key part of plan, Papa told her - to go on making a mess and keep the shopkeeper distracted for as long as she could.

"And whatever you do," he warned, looking at her hard, "don't say _aw, shit_ like you always do when you drop something."

Not very long ago, Eponine would've pointed out that _he_ said _aw, shit_ whenever he dropped anything, too. She had learned it from him, after all. But the hardness in his eyes as he looked at her now made her hold her tongue. Papa had been acting meaner lately, snapping at her and Mama over the littlest things, and Eponine couldn't be sure what would set him off.

"You have to say nice things like _oh dear, I'm so clumsy_ ," Papa went on. "You have to keep apologizing, too. This man's gotta think you're a nice gal, or he won't help you pick up the candy and this won't work at all." He paused and leaned closer, bringing his face so near to hers that the beer on his breath almost made her dizzy. There was no mistaking the threat in his voice when he asked, "And you don't want to mess this up for me, do you, my girl?"

A cold, uneasy feeling settled in the pit of Eponine's stomach, and although she was afraid of what Papa would do if she didn't go along with his plan, it wasn't fear alone that made her agree to it. She was only eleven-years-old, and even though her father had become meaner lately, she still loved him. She still wanted him to be proud of her. So she nodded her agreement, with a desperate hope that if she pulled this off, Papa might be sweet to her again.

* * *

On the day of the con, Eponine put on her cleanest dress, and Mama did her hair into two braids tied with ribbons and pinched her cheeks hard to make them look rosy. Papa watched with that same hard look in his eyes that made Eponine feel uneasy, even after he nodded approvingly and said, "That's good, now she looks real innocent-like."

 _Act like a nice gal_ , Papa had told her, and Eponine did. She walked into the shop with the coins jangling in her dress pocket, and she smiled as she perused their candy display, taking her time before deciding which pieces to put in her bag. Did she want sour or sweet, sticky or chewy? She took her bag to the counter and made it look like an accident when she knocked it over and sent the pieces all rolling away in every direction.

"Oh! Oh dear, I'm sorry, monsieur," Eponine said, and she was surprised by her own voice. Neither the nervous butterflies in her stomach nor the heavy guilt on her mind could be heard in her voice. No, she sounded sweet, innocent and apologetic, and something in her voice reminded of her of Cosette and the meek way she always used to duck her head.

Her hands were smooth as she put a few pieces of candy back into her bag, and rushed so quickly to pick up more that she knocked it over again. She did everything just as Papa had told her: she kept the shopkeeper occupied for some time, acted apologetic and sweet, and tried not to think about whatever Papa was doing that she was distracting from.

Eponine had almost asked her father about his part in this plan, but she didn't. She had always been an outspoken girl, but more and more lately, she was learning to hold her tongue around Papa. He would only snap at her for asking, and his temper scared her. She guessed guiltily that Papa was stealing from the shop while the man was distracted, but she didn't want to know for certain. Stealing had always been a matter of course for her family - Eponine had stolen things on her own when she was little, sweets and small toys that she could get away with - but she'd read in the Bible recently that stealing was wrong. It was in one of the boring parts. The boring parts said that a lot of the things that her father did were wrong, and that was another reason why Eponine didn't like those pages. Sometimes, Papa reminded Eponine of Lot, the man in Genesis who got so drunk that he slept with his own daughters and didn't know the difference.

After she finally picked up all the candy, paid the man, and left the shop, she found Papa in an alley several blocks away, where they had planned to meet. He was waiting for her, and as soon as he saw her, he exclaimed, "Eponine!" and swept her off her feet and spun her around and covered her lips and face in kisses. "You did _perfectly_ , Eponine! You're a bloody _natural_! Yeah, you're my daughter, all right."

Eponine said nothing, for she still felt guilty over what she had just done. She blushed, for she felt embarrassed and a bit uncomfortable that he was kissing her lips as if she were still a little girl. But despite herself, she smiled and basked in his praise, for it felt like such a long time since her father had shown her any kindness. She ate her candy, but found that it wasn't nearly as good as the candy that the nuns had given her at Christmas. But that candy had been a gift, and this was stolen. It tasted strange, like sugar and sadness.

"You were damn _splendid_ , Eponine," Papa gushed on, kissing her again. "Yeah, you're going to be my partner in crime from now on," and her smile faltered. "You acted just like a nice little girl," and she wondered uneasily when she had stopped _being_ a nice girl and started only acting like one.


	6. A footstep on the stair

Wow, four whole months without an update. I promise that I haven't abandoned this story; I've just been busy with real life and writing other things. Many thanks to everyone who's still following along and reviewing.

* * *

When Eponine was twelve, she stopped calling her father _Papa_.

By then, she was a regular part of his con jobs. His cons had grown bigger, more daring, and he'd formed a little gang of friends to help him. Eponine didn't like them. Her role was usually lookout or distraction. She was a natural now at knocking things over in shops to distract the shopkeepers. Her father had taught her how to cry on cue, and she would stand on street corners, crying and pretending to be lost, to distract policemen or wealthy people. Her school attendance had always been sporadic, but she wasn't going to school at all anymore, because they had to make long walks to other neighborhoods - sometimes as far away as Varreddes - so that nobody would catch onto them. Papa always said that there was no point in going to school anyway, that there was nothing worth learning in books. "I did all _my_ learnin' on the street," he'd say, pointing to his chest, "and look how I turned out."

Walking so far made Eponine's feet and legs ache when she went barefoot, and she was almost always barefoot now. Mama said that they would get her shoes again when she was older and didn't outgrow them so quickly, but Papa had cut her off, saying, "By then, she'll be bloody old enough to fend for herself!"

Her job tomorrow was "real simple," he told her, late one Saturday night when he woke her up to go over the details with her. He had found a wealthy couple who went for a long walk through the park every Sunday afternoon, the one day that their housekeeper had off. Papa had always said that it was astonishing how many rich people were stupid enough to leave their houses at the same time every day. He didn't give Eponine any of the details on what he would be doing, but he never did.

"All you got to do," he told her, "is stay on the pavement and give a whistle when you see them coming 'round the corner. You can bring your skippy rope and act like you're playing."

"I don't have a skipping rope," she said flatly, rubbing her eyes.

He scowled. "What happened to the one I gave you?"

She almost answered that he'd never given her a skipping rope, but then she remembered, vaguely, that he'd given her one when she was little. She couldn't recall the occasion - had it been Christmas... or her birthday? - but she remembered thanking him for it, hugging him and pressing her smooth cheek against his rough one. The memory came from long ago, from when they still lived in their old inn in Montfermeil and didn't have to steal to survive. Those years felt so far away to Eponine, as if they had happened to someone else. What had become of her skipping rope since then, she had no idea.

"I'm too old for skipping rope," she told him. His eyes flashed angrily at this, but before he could move, she added, "It might look suspicious to some, a girl my age skipping rope." She had learned to be careful with what she said to her father, for sometimes now he struck her for contradicting him or saying anything that he didn't want to hear. A few weeks ago, one awful night when they were all hungry, she'd lost her temper and snapped at him, "Why can't you just get a job like normal fathers?" and that was the worst slap across the face she'd ever gotten. But often enough, he couldn't manage to hit her. Eponine was fast and good at ducking out of his way, especially when he was drunk.

But now, he shrugged and said simply, "Eh, you can still skip rope. You're only ten."

Eponine stared at him, shocked and hurt. To forget her age was a new low even by his standards. "I'm twelve, Papa," she said edgily. "I'm _twelve_."

He didn't call her _my little girl_ anymore, and she rarely still called him _Papa_. She didn't know then that this would be the last time she ever did. Occasionally, she would call him _Father_ , but more and more, they would talk without calling each other anything at all, like strangers.

"Whatever," he said impatiently, waving his hand. "I'll knick one for you, or... no, Babet's kid's got a skipping rope. You can use hers. Keep watch and give a warble when you see them coming." He had taught her different bird-calls over the last few months, and she was very good at them. But neither of them had ever learned the proper names for birds, so they referred to the calls as warbles, chirps, and caws.

Eponine didn't answer him right away. She simply looked at him, at the dark circles under his eyes and scratchy stubble on his cheek, trying to gauge his mood. But the night was cloudy, with no moonlight shining through her scrubby little window, and she couldn't see his face well enough to tell. But she looked at him, at what she could see of him, and wondered how he could really be the same man who had once given her a skipping rope.

Perhaps her melancholy showed on her face, because just then, her father narrowed his eyes at her and asked, "Well, what's eating you?" Before she could answer, he leaned closer and ran one hand roughly through her hair. His fingers caught on the snarls and tugged painfully - she had no hairbrush - and she twisted out of his reach. "Don't go growing up and getting all moody on me, now," he murmured, with something almost like tenderness in his voice.

 _You imagined that_ , Eponine told herself, after he left her room.

* * *

The robbery went smoothly the next morning. Eponine kept watch, skipping rope near the park just like any good little girl would, and whistled a warble to warn her father when she saw the wealthy couple returning home from their walk. They looked like kind people, and guilt tugged at her over helping her father steal from them. Eponine had mentioned this guilty feeling to him once, and he'd flown into a rage at her mother. "How'd any kid of mine end up growing a conscience?" he shouted. "Are you sure she's really mine, woman?" They'd yelled at each for the rest of the night, and Eponine felt even worse and wished she hadn't said anything.

The robbery went smoothly, and Eponine was glad that she was only the lookout and didn't have to help her father actually break in and steal things. As she walked back home, which was their meeting place this time, she remembered how her father had said that it was the rich people's own fault, for always leaving their house at the same time - but it didn't make her feel any better. She didn't believe everything that her father said like she used to.

Eponine's thoughts were interrupted as she started up the stairs of the apartment house where they now lived in a few rooms near the top floor. Pesha, a half-breed Gypsy boy her own age, lived down the hall from them with his family, and even though Eponine used to get along well with boys, she despised this one, who was always bothering her and teasing her. As she went upstairs now, he appeared and followed her, grinning.

"Ooh, Eponine, I love your hat," he called teasingly from behind her.

Eponine ran one hand over her tangled hair, thinking that perhaps he was teasing her because a leaf had fallen on her head, but her fingers found nothing but knots. She scowled at Pesha over her shoulder. "I'm not wearing a hat," she spat, and then she blushed, feeling stupid for saying something so obvious. For some strange reason, talking to boys wasn't easy for her now like it was once.

Pesha just kept grinning. "And I _love_ your shoes," he added.

This made Eponine angry. Pesha knew that she went barefoot all the time, just like he did. Few of the children in their apartment house wore shoes. She was already too embittered by life to find any humor in his teasing, so she turned around and swung her fist at him. Her father had taught her a little about fighting and praised her mean right hook, but Pesha was good at ducking punches too, especially since he was lower on the stairs. He ducked her swing easily, laughed, and ran off, looking pleased with himself.

Her parents were arguing when she reached their rooms. Her father had stolen a fine jeweled necklace that her mother wanted to keep, rather than pawn. "And just wear the fuck would you wear it, woman?" her father was asking. "The grand marquis's fête?" Eponine was still so angry that without meaning to, she sat down at the table where her father had spread out his stolen loot and told them what had just happened with Pesha.

She glared at her father when he burst out laughing. She didn't see what was funny. "He likes you, my girl," he said, as if it were obvious. He moved his chair closer to hers and threw an arm around her shoulders. He looked her up and down, and his gaze made her uncomfortable. "Already catching boys' eyes," he went on. "Well, you are growing up prettier than I expected. How old did you say you are again?"

" _Twelve_ ," she spat. She tried shrugging his arm off her, but his grip was too strong. "If he liked me, why would he tease me?" she asked skeptically.

"Girl, don't you know anything? That's what boys to do to girls they like! Hell, you should've seen me with your ma. I used to fling pebbles at her, didn't I, woman?"

Shocked, Eponine looked at her mother, but her mother just nodded, starry-eyed, as if her father was telling some romantic old love story. He laughed again, and Eponine's stomach tightened, nervous and a bit afraid. If this was what boys did to girls they _liked_... what did they do to show _love_?


	7. A door that I forever close

I hope that I'm starting to get back on track with updating this story. Thanks again to everyone who's left feedback.

* * *

When Eponine was thirteen, her mother almost died.

Eponine was home alone with her when it started. It was a cold, dark winter evening, and she was sitting on the floor in their apartment, rolling up some dirty old newspapers that she'd found in a rubbish heap. They were out of firewood again, but if she could roll up the newspapers tightly enough, they would burn almost like sticks. But these were so old and crumpled and tore too easily. She paused from her work, frustrated, and stretched her aching back and arms.

"Eponine?" her mother called from their room. "Where's your pa?"

Eponine was very cranky from being hungry and cold, but the strain in her mother's voice made her foul mood vanish. She got up and went to the doorway of their room, concerned. Her mother was lying on her side in bed, her legs curled up to her stomach. Her eyes were wild, and her breath was short.

"What's wrong?" Eponine asked her, even though she already had an inkling.

"I _said_ , where's your pa?" her mother hissed, and Eponine sighed impatiently. Her mother could be such a fool sometimes. She was certainly being one now, asking for her father as if _he_ would be any help in this situation.

"I don't know," she said. Her father had gone out earlier that day, without a word to anyone about where he was going or for how long. He did that often now, and every time, Eponine secretly hoped that it would be the last time, and that he would leave and never come back. "He probably went to - "

But she was cut off by a moan from her mother, a moan so loud and full of pain that Eponine's hand trembled and gripped the door frame. It was such a terrible sound that Eponine wanted to go to her own room, shut the door, and put her hands over her ears... but she didn't, of course. Her mother was much too pale, and when she shifted a bit on the bed, Eponine saw blood on the sheets. She hadn't even suspected that her mother was pregnant - she seemed too old for that now, though Eponine knew that their lifestyle made her look older than she was - but she had learned the facts of life at a very young age.

Eponine took a deep breath to steady herself. "All right," she said slowly, struggling to keep her voice calm. "How... how far along are you?"

But her mother didn't answer. She only clenched her teeth together and drew her legs tighter to her abdomen. The pain was clearly getting worse.

"Try counting backwards," Eponine said, and she stepped into the room, closer to her mother, even though she wanted to turn and flee. "When did you... you last..." But it was too awkward to say the words, and likely her mother wouldn't have been able to answer, anyway. So Eponine counted backwards herself. She had overheard her parents being intimate many times. It was January now, and the last time she'd overheard them had been... Christmas? Yes, she remembered her father's old cajolings - "Come on, woman, it's Christmas, ain't it?" - and pulling her thin blanket up over her head, trying to block out the sounds of them together.

Her hand only trembled a little as she pushed her mother's hair away from her sweaty face. It felt strange and scary to be acting like a mother to this woman who had so rarely ever acted like a mother to her. She said in her most soothing voice, "All right, just stay here, and try to relax. I'll be right back."

* * *

She wanted help from a nun - a nun with nurse training, like the ones who'd taken care of her when she was sick - but she didn't know where she would find one this late in the evening. So instead she took the stairs to a upper floor of their building, where an old woman called Madame Agnès rented a room. She was very smart and usually kind, and when Eponine knocked on her door and told her what was happening, she gathered up some clean linens and came back to their apartment with her.

Her mother's bleeding had gotten worse just in the few minutes that she'd been gone, and when Eponine saw how pale and still she was, and the red streaks across her sheets, for a split-second, she thought that her mother had died, and that she would be left with only her father. Or worse yet, that her mother was dead and her father was gone for good, and she would be completely alone in the world before she even turned fourteen. But then, in the next split-second, her mother shifted and moaned again, and Eponine's legs nearly collapsed from relief.

Their apartment building was so crowded and the walls so thin that when the pains got worse and her mother started screaming, other women heard and came to help. They tended to her mother as the evening wore on, and Eponine was spared from seeing the worst of it. Madame Agnès tasked her with making enough fire to boil a kettle of water; it wasn't easy with only old newspapers, but Eponine managed. She answered the door when a few other women knocked; one brought them a pitcher of water, another, a loaf of bread. "It'll help your mama get her strength back," she told Eponine as she handed it to her. She squeezed her shoulder and added, "Take heart, child, every woman loses a baby or two."

They were being kind, and Eponine supposed that she should feel grateful, but there was only bitterness in her heart. Didn't these fools know that their kindness only made it easier for people like her father to take advantage of them?

* * *

Later, after it was all over, Madame Agnès assured her that her mother would be fine, and she promised to come back tomorrow to check on her. "Go in and rub your mama's back for her," she instructed Eponine, before she left. "It'll help her get to sleep, and she needs a good rest." It felt strange to hear Madame Agnès calling her _your mama_. Eponine hadn't called her mother _Mama_ almost since she had called her father _Papa_.

Eponine forced herself into her parents' room and sat very gingerly on the edge of the bed. Her mother's face was turned away from her, but Eponine could see that her eyes were still half-open. She searched for something to say.

"You look better," she lied, rubbing her mother's back awkwardly. "How do you feel?"

"I'll live," her mother muttered. Her eyes slipped close, and Eponine thought she'd fallen asleep until she added in a slurred voice, "All for the best, I guess. What would we'd've have done with another one?"

Eponine said nothing but went on rubbing her back. It felt so strange to be trying to take care of somebody. She was very good at stealing - her father always bragged to his friends that no girl in France could pick pockets or create diversions as well as she could - but she knew so little about tenderness or comfort. She tried to remember what the nuns in the charity hospital had gone when she was sick, and she wondered what sort of life she might have known if her father had left her there with the nuns and never come back for her. What a life she might have known.

A few minutes later, after her mother fell asleep, Eponine felt tears on her face and realized that she was crying.

* * *

By the time that her father came home, much later that night, Eponine was too empty for tears. She was in her own bed at last, fast asleep from fear and exhaustion, but she roused when she heard their front door open and close, and then came her father's heavy, familiar tread, creaking across the floor. Eponine felt so angry at him that part of her wanted to charge out of bed and shake him and scream in his face... but she didn't. The fatigue and apathy had crushed her anger, and she simply lay in bed, blinking up at the ceiling. She was just starting to get used to the idea that he had finally abandoned her and her mother for good.

She listened to his footsteps as he looked in on her mother, and then he was in her room. Her bed shifted as he sat down on the edge of it, and she perked up when she heard the familiar _slosh_ of liquid in a bottle.

"You awake? I nicked you some beer," he said. "I figured you could use some after a night like - "

Eponine had sat up in bed and grabbed the bottle from his hands before he could finish. Alcohol always took the edge off when she was stressed, and she had been aching for a beer through the whole terrible evening. She drank a long swig and felt a little better. "Where the hell have _you_ been?" she asked her father angrily, wiping her mouth.

Her father actually almost looked guilty - _almost_. "I started back earlier, but I was coming upstairs and heard your ma screaming and figured what was going on. Ain't no time to have a man around, is it?"

She drank some more beer, burped, and glared at him. "Do you have any idea what I've been through tonight?"

His guilty look vanished, or perhaps she had only imagined it, and he glared back at her, his eyes glinting like daggers in the darkness. "Yeah, I think I have some idea. I was there when it happened last time, weren't I?"

It caught Eponine off-guard that he said _last time_ , not _when you were born_. "W-What do you mean? What last time?"

"Last time your ma lost a baby. It was just like this."

Eponine put down the beer bottle and sat up straighter. Her mother had miscarried before? "When was this?"

"Uh..." her father frowned, as if trying to remember, but his mind was too muddled from drinking. He shrugged and said, "In Montfermeil, I guess."

Eponine felt as if her mind was trying to catch up to what he was saying. Perhaps this had happened before she was born, and that was why she knew nothing about it. "I don't remember that."

"Eh, you were a little thing." He held one hand out at the height of a six or seven-year-old. "I figured what was coming when your ma started moaning, so I made you drink some whiskey to knock you out. Didn't want you asking questions and getting in the way."

Eponine racked her brain, trying to remember anything like what he was describing... but she didn't. She didn't remember hearing her mother moan like she had done tonight. She didn't remember her father pulling her into a corner and forcing whiskey down her throat. It made her feel scared and uncertain, as if she couldn't trust her own memories.

Her father went on, "Yeah, it was in Montfermeil, cause I remember that little brat cleaning up all the blood after. Colette."

"Cosette," Eponine corrected, the name springing unbidden to her lips, even though she had not thought about Cosette in a long time. She shuddered now to imagine Cosette as a little girl, cowering and listening to moans like she had just heard tonight, then having to clean up blood and... other bodily fluids afterwards. Eponine suddenly wished that she had been kinder to Cosette. She wondered, as she fell asleep, if life had been kinder to Cosette than it had been to her, in the years since they'd seen each other last.


	8. To leave those memories there

Fair warning: Although I tried to tone it down as much as I could, I'm afraid there's still a good deal of angst/cheesiness in this chapter. I discovered that it's kinda unavoidable when you're writing about a broken heart, and Eponine gets her first one here. Thanks again to everyone who's reviewed!

* * *

When Eponine was fourteen, she met Montparnasse. He was her first big crush.

By then, her family had finally arrived in Paris. _Paris!_ It was such a grand, exciting city that even her jaded soul felt thrilled to be there. Eponine had always heard so much talk about Paris, and she had a strange feeling that her entire life had been leading here, that all the other places where she'd lived had simply been stops along the way.

That feeling was confirmed when she met Montparnasse. Eponine was returning from a trek through the new neighborhood - she liked to challenge her sense of direction in new places, taking as many twists and turns as she could and then finding her way back - when she saw him for the first time. He was leaning against the wall of the slummy boarding house where they now lived, talking to her father. He was handsome, with smooth dark hair and long-lashed eyes, but what struck Eponine more was the casual, lazy air to him. He acted as if he'd never had to worry about where his next meal would come from, or about anything else. Eponine stopped in her tracks, and she might've stood there staring at him all afternoon, but her father noticed her.

"Eponine," he called, catching hold of her thin wrist in his hand and pulling her closer, "Want you to meet Montparnasse. Already made a name for hisself as one of the best prowlers in Paris. Montparnasse, this here's my kid, Eponine."

His dark, heavy-lidded gaze came to rest on her, and Eponine blushed a bit and suddenly wished that she bathed and brushed her hair more often. She didn't have a hairbrush anymore, but she would run her fingers through it to keep it from getting too matted. She smiled, stood up straighter, and said, "I've heard your name before, sir. It's a part of Paris near the Luxembourg Gardens."

Montparnasse smiled and raised his brows, impressed. "That's right. Your father was telling me that you only just arrived in the city," he answered. He was the perfect opposite of her father, all smooth moves and soft-spoken words. "You must learn your way about quickly, mademoiselle."

"Oh, there's lots of things I know," she bragged, giggling and trying to imitate his nonchalance. Had a man ever called her _mademoiselle_ before? She was suddenly lightheaded and weak in the knees, and she thought for a moment that she might be ill, for she had never felt the sensations of love before.

But then, she had never known a man like Montparnasse before. He wasn't grungy and rough like her father and the other men of his gang, and he was much younger than them, too - about twenty, Eponine guessed. Twenty was within her reach, wasn't it? His hands were clean and free of callouses, and his hair always looked so glossy. It looked almost as if he washed and combed it regularly, but Eponine couldn't believe that he really did. Only the wealthiest people in Paris, who had servants to pump and heat their water for them, could wash their hair at all. She had fantasies of running her fingers through Montparnasse's hair and finding out if it felt as smooth as it looked. He dressed like a dandy, with neckties and gloves. He was a source of endless wonder to Eponine. He was from the gutter too, like her family, yet he carried himself like one of the bourgeoisie.

Her old guilt and reluctance to help her father and his gang vanished when she met Montparnasse. Suddenly, Eponine couldn't do enough for them; she offered to keep watch, to create diversions, to pick pockets, to scope out new areas of the city and find suitable houses for them rob. She would do almost anything for a chance to interact with Montparnasse. She had never been very feminine, but she made an effort there, too. She stole a hairbrush and some soap from a shop and began trying to keep herself cleaner. She found a piece of broken glass in an abandoned building and brought it home to use as a mirror. She would hold it up in front of her face and practice smiling and batting her eyes.

For all her efforts to impress him, Montparnasse didn't pay much notice to her... but when he did, he was kind. "You've got sharp eyes, mademoiselle," he said to her one day, after she spotted a police inspector approaching from blocks away. It warmed Eponine's heart to hear his compliments, because no matter how hard she worked for her father, he never said one kind word to her anymore. Her favorite daydream was that Montparnasse would marry her and take her away from her father. She wondered how he didn't hear her heart thundering away whenever he came near her.

* * *

Eponine had no proper bedroom in their new lodgings, only a tiny room off the kitchen that was meant to be a pantry. She had no proper bed, only a pallet of blankets on the floor. She longed for more space and more privacy, but the one advantage of her room was that her father and his friends often stayed up late in the kitchen, sitting around the table and planning out their next con. Eponine loved listening to Montparnasse talk as she laid on her blankets at night. Her father's and the other men's voices were rough and often slurred, like sandpaper, but Montparnasse's soft, low voice was silky against Eponine's ears. Sometimes when he was talking, she closed her eyes and let her hands roam over her body. Her body looked more like a woman's now than a girl's, and she hoped that Montparnasse had noticed.

One night, very late, her father barged into her room and roughly shook her awake. "Get up," he spat at her. "Need you to tend to my arm."

A lantern was burning on the kitchen table, and in its light, Eponine could see why her father was in such a foul mood. There was long, ragged scrape across his forearm, oozing blood and puss through the bits of gravel and dirt stuck to it. Likely he'd fallen and slid that arm along the ground when he landed, but Eponine didn't ask what had happened. When he was like this, there was nothing she could say that wouldn't make him angrier. So she just silently went to work, filling a basin with water and fetching a clean rag.

She was still half-asleep and so focused on tending to her father's injury that she didn't even notice Montparnasse in the room until he spoke. "That was a hard fall you took," he said in that calm, silky voice. He was sitting on the other side of the table, looking over a map of Paris and some other papers. "But we'll go back and case the joint tomorrow night."

Eponine kept her head bent low over her father's arm, cleaning out the scrape and binding it with a rag, but occasionally, she stole little glances at Montparnasse and smiled at him... but he didn't even notice. He kept looking over the map, and then he leaned back in his chair, pulled a small knife from his pocket, and trimming his nails in that bored, careless way that he did everything. His nails were so clean. Eponine looked down at her father's hands, calloused and grimy, and at her own, which weren't much better, and suddenly felt ashamed. Wasn't she a fool to hope that Montparnasse would ever be interested in her?

"All right, then, back to bed with you," her father ordered, when she done bandaging his arm, and he gave her a swat on the backside towards her room. He didn't even say _thank you_ , but she didn't expect him to, and she was too tired to care. She laid down on her blankets, exhausted, but when she overheard what Montparnasse said next, she was suddenly wide-awake.

"That's a smart girl you've got," Montparnasse said, and Eponine nearly bolted upright in bed. He was talking about _her_! He thought _she_ was smart!

"Who, Eponine? Yeah, she comes in handy, I guess," came her father's careless reply. He paused, then added, "You know, I can't think why, but she's got quite a crush on you."

Eponine's mouth fell open in horror. Had her feelings for Montparnasse been so obvious all along? She prayed for the floorboards to open up and swallow her whole.

In the kitchen, her father laughed crudely and joked, "No accounting for taste, I reckon, just like her mother!"

Montparnasse laughed too, then asked, "How old is she?"

"Uh... she's twelve."

She wanted to scratch his eyes out. She was fourteen!

Montparnasse said, "Hmmm," and it was a thoughtful, purring sound, low in his throat. It made Eponine go weak at the knees. Then he added, "She seems older than twelve to me," and her heart soared.

"Eh, maybe she's thirteen. I forget." Eponine's tiny, windowless room was pitch-black, but she heard their voices clearly through the thin wall, and she could practically _see_ her father shrugging as he said this. "Anyways, if she's smart, it's only 'cause _I_ taught her everything she knows."

Eponine heard the scraping sound of a chair being pushed back, one of them standing up from the table. It was Montparnasse. "Well, she's smart for her age, but I'm not interested in little girls who haven't even grown tits yet. And speaking of tits, I know some whores who lower their prices around this hour. I'll see you tomorrow. Goodnight."

Eponine's eyes smarted with tears, but she pressed one hand over her lips and bit the inside of mouth until she tasted blood, to keep from crying. She was not going to cry while her father might overhear her. She was _not_. She lay still and listened as her father told Montparnasse goodnight. She waited until he had retired to her parents' bedroom and their apartment fell silent, and then, finally, she buried her face in her blankets and sobbed. Her life hadn't been an easy one, but she had never felt so brokenhearted, so humiliated, so _stupid_ as she did now.

" _A little girl who hasn't even grown tits yet_." That was all that she was to Montparnasse, and right now, while she lay here crying, he was probably in another part of the city, jumping into bed with some full-figured prostitute. She imagined his clean, familiar hands and soft lips against another woman's skin, and she had to bite her lips and take great, gulping breaths to tame her sobs before they grew so loud that they woke her parents. Her father would have no sympathy for her if her crying woke him up. She had nobody to turn to for comfort, so she fumbled around on the shelf until she found the old children's Bible that she'd gotten from the nuns in Meaux. It was a bit tattered now, but she still had it, for it was the only book that she'd ever owned. She opened it to one of the most boring parts, the Book of Psalms, and read until she fell asleep.

 _...the words of my enemy and threats of the wicked, they bring suffering down upon me and assail me in their anger. Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. I would flee to my place of shelter, far from the tempest and storm._

 _A place of shelter_... but was there _was_ any such place?

* * *

When Eponine awoke the next morning, she didn't feel better. She didn't feel anything. She sat up on her blankets, rubbed her eyes, and waited for the sorrow of last night to hit her again... but it didn't come. Even when her mind replayed Montparnasse's awful words, she didn't feel sad, or angry, or anything besides empty. It was as if the part of her that used to care about anything had disappeared during the night. It was strange, but Eponine decided that feeling nothing was better than feeling sad, and as she got up, she swore that she would never fall in love again.


	9. So when the shadows lengthen

It's hard to believe that it's now been over a year since I first started publishing this story! I'll admit that nothing has ever taken me so long to write before, and I really appreciate my readers for sticking with it. With the previous chapter, it became the second-longest story that I've written so far. I don't think it has a chance of overtaking my current longest story ( _Pages Torn Out_ ), but I'm happy that I've carried it this far.

* * *

When Eponine was sixteen, she met Marius.

He lived in the same apartment house as her family, but she didn't meet him there. She met him at a soup kitchen run by some nuns. She discovered it on one of her long treks through the city, which she made more often now to get away from her father and his friends. The little group of people and the nuns' familiar habits caught her eye from down the street, and when she came closer, she realized that they were serving soup and bread in a church courtyard. She hurried to the join the line.

Along with her soup, one of the nuns gave her a little slip of paper with a schedule of when meals were served. Eponine read it until she had it memorized, then tore it up into pieces. She didn't want to keep it and risk her father finding it. She never mentioned the soup kitchen to her parents, but from then on, she made sure to never miss a meal there, and she made sure to say, "Thank you, sister," every time they gave her a bowl of soup.

One afternoon, she was sitting on the grass in a corner of the courtyard, trying to make herself small, trying not to eat her soup too ravenously, when a young man approached and sat down beside her. "Excuse me," he said shyly, "would you - I mean, do you mind if I sit here?"

Eponine said nothing, but she made a tiny motion between a shrug and a nod. She was always suspicious of strangers now, but this one didn't seem to want anything more than conversation.

"My name is Marius," he said, between bites of his soup. "I'm living in the Gorbeau House, too. I've seen you there, I think?"

Eponine looked at him for the first time since he'd sat down. He was about her own age, and his freckled face and big blue eyes were vaguely familiar. She remembered passing him on the stairs sometimes.

He made a few more attempts at conversation that day, but she wasn't interested in Marius until a few days later, when he happened to be returning to his room just as she was passing by in the hall. He lived in a single room one floor down. "Good evening, Eponine," he said pleasantly to her. She nodded but said nothing, and she was about to brush past him when she spotted the books under his arm. Then, as he opened the door to his room, she glanced in and could scarcely believe her eyes.

Marius's room was small and bare, with little furniture or finery, like her own family's rooms, but it was like looking into another world. There were so many books - small books and thick books, papers and newspapers, stacked in high, neat piles all over his floor. Eponine had never seen so many books outside of a library. Her fingers were fairly itching to open one, and without meaning to, she stepped closer.

"You rob a bookstore?" she blurted out, then immediately blushed. What did it say about her that her first assumption was that he was a thief? Wouldn't he be insulted?

But Marius just laughed. "No, actually, I'm studying to be a lawyer." He paused for a moment and watched her staring hungrily at his books, then smiled gently. "You must be a book lover, too, I imagine. Would you like to come in?"

She met his eyes and smiled back at him, flattered and pleased, and she was only a bit bothered by how strange and foreign it felt to have an expression of happiness on her face again.

Inside, while Marius put his books down, Eponine knelt on the floor, perusing the titles of his books and slowly, almost reverently, running her fingers along their spines. She was even more impressed when she saw that some of the books were in English. She picked up a thick one and flipped through it, staring curiously at the pages full of strange words.

"You study English, too?" she asked.

Marius was looking over some papers on a table that was one of the only pieces of furniture in the room. "No, I speak it already," he answered. "That's how I've been earning a living, actually - doing translation work."

Her mouth fell open a bit. She had never known anyone who could speak English. "Do you really?" she asked, amazed. She held the book out to him and pointed to a random spot on the page. "What does that say?"

Marius peered at the words. "In Belmont is a lady richly left," he translated. "That's one of Shakespeare's plays, The Merchant of Venice."

She stared at him, so openly impressed that he shuffled his feet and looked away. Then she blushed again, embarrassed for embarrassing him. She put down the English book and picked up one in French. She found herself reading an account of the Children's Crusade. According to the book, it began with a French shepherd boy named Stephan, who claimed to have had visions of Christ and was seen performing miracles in Saint-Denis. He claimed to have a letter for King Philip II written by Christ, but Philip was unimpressed and told the boy and his followers to go home. Then Stephan began preaching at an abbey, and -

Eponine stopped reading when she realized that Marius had just asked her a question. She blushed and began babbling, which felt very strange, because she couldn't remember the last time that she'd done either.

"Sorry, I wasn't - I mean, I didn't mean to read so long - I just... the only book I ever had is a children's Bible, and it's so old, and I've read it all, and..."

But Marius simply smiled, understanding. "I know, it's easy to forget about everything else when you're reading something good." He hesitated, then added, "You know, if you'd like something new to read, you could borrow one of my books."

But she couldn't. She didn't want her father to see her reading it and ask her where she'd gotten it. He would never approve of her befriending a boy who was studying to be a lawyer. But even though she never said one word about her family to Marius, he seemed to sense that there was no love, no happiness behind the door to their rooms. He began letting her spend time in his room in the evenings, when she needed to get away from her father. While Marius translated papers, she would sit in the corner and pour over one book after another; she liked the history books best, because they made her own sad life seem less significant. Occasionally they talked, but there were long stretches of silence - an easy, comfortable silence.

Marius hadn't always been so poor. He was used to a very different sort of life, and perhaps he had even grown up quite wealthy. He never said a word about it to Eponine, but she figured it out right away. It wasn't just that he was naive enough to be so kind to a guttersnipe of a girl that he barely knew. It wasn't just that he knew how to speak English and must've had a fine education. It was more obvious in all the things that he _didn't_ know. One evening, she found him sitting at his table, bent over a pair of trousers, red-faced and frustrated as his fingers fumbled over a rip.

"I just can't seem to sew this up," he muttered, threading his needle again.

Eponine peered at his trousers. "You have to start sewing farther away from the rip," she said. "I could mend it for you, if you like."

"Would you really?" Marius asked, amazed.

Eponine had been mending rips and tears on her own clothing ever since the old man had taken Cosette away from her parents. Marius handed her his trousers, and in no time at all, she had sewed up the rip and neatly tucked in the tail of the thread. Marius stared, so openly impressed that she blushed and looked away, while he thanked her over and over.

Only someone who had never seen a rip repaired before would think it such an admirable skill. But if Marius had grown up rich enough to get new trousers whenever he ripped his old ones, then how had he ended up here at the Gorbeau House, alone, scraping by on translation work? Eponine was curious to know how his circumstances had changed so drastically, but she never asked him. How could she, when he never once asked why she spent so much time in his room to avoid her family? She always felt grateful to him for that.

One evening, she lingered late in Marius's room, not wanting to leave and go home to her father, who had been in such a foul mood when she'd left. Marius was busy translating some legal documents, and she was sitting very still and quiet in a corner, rereading about the Children's Crusade and trying not to disturb him, when she glanced up and saw that he'd fallen asleep.

He looked so young, so innocent - asleep in his chair, with his head lolling off to one side and his pen still in his hand - that Eponine's bitter old heart softened. She walked over to him and carefully slid the papers out from under his hands, not wanting them to get ink-smeared. She went to the corner where he kept his mattress rolled up during the day and picked up his blanket. But as she was laying it over him, he stirred.

"What?" he murmured, still half-asleep.

Eponine froze. "I... I'm sorry," she stammered. "I didn't mean to wake you. I was only... I mean, you fell asleep working, and I was just going to go, but I didn't want you to get cold, and..."

Marius rubbed his eyes and yawned, and Eponine had a strange, sudden sensation to smooth his tousled hair. "I've been so tired lately," he said groggily. "I never realized how much harder it is to sleep when you're hungry."

"Do a belt supper before you go to bed," Eponine suggested. "That helps you sleep."

"I..." Marius paused and blinked, bewildered. "I'm sorry, did you say a _belt supper_?"

He looked so confused that she was tempted to laugh, but she didn't. She explained, "Yes, you have a big drink of water, then you do your belt up tight. It helps you feel full. Helps you sleep when you're tired, too."

He smiled a sleepy-eyed smile at her. "Oh, I see. A belt supper," he repeated. "Thanks, Eponine, I'll try that."

They said goodnight, and as she left his room and went back to her own, she marveled - imagine not knowing what a belt supper was! Imagine growing up wealthy enough that you'd never gone to bed with your stomach growling. Eponine had been doing belt suppers since she was a little girl, but she didn't resent Marius. No, she felt an urge to care for him, this young man who could speak English and was studying to be a lawyer, yet who knew nothing about being poor. They would make such a good pair together, him with his book smarts and her with her street smarts.

After Montparnasse, Eponine had solemnly sworn that she would never fall in love again. And she certainly hadn't _meant_ to fall in love with Marius. But she realized now that at some point - she wasn't sure exactly when - she had done just that.


	10. Into an evening sun

This chapter was a difficult one to write. I think this is point of the story where _Les Misérables_ starts to become _Les Coincidénces_.

* * *

When Eponine was seventeen, she saw Cosette again.

She didn't realize, right away, who she was. It happened one day when she was in the slums with her parents, acting as the lookout again. Her father had heard talk of an old man who often went into the slums giving alms, and he had devised a new con where her mother played a beggar-woman with a baby. Her mother had always been able to cry on cue, and when her father spotted the old man coming, he convinced him to follow him down an alley. Eponine stayed at the mouth of alley, scanning the streets for any sign of police, but her eyes fell instead on the young girl who had accompanied the old man - his daughter, she supposed.

She looked about the same age as Eponine, and for some strange reason, she seemed rather familiar, as if Eponine had seen her before... but that was impossible. This girl was obviously wealthy, wearing a fine dress and a ridiculous bonnet that practically blocked off Eponine's whole view of the street. Where would Eponine have ever seen someone like her before? Yet she kept on staring at her, trying to place her, and she was so good at it that the other girl never even noticed her gaze. Eponine felt a sudden surge of resentment at her for that. She couldn't imagine being so oblivious, so naive.

It wasn't until she heard, from the alley behind her, her father growl, "You're the bastard who borrowed Colette!" that the pieces finally fell into place... and even then, Eponine couldn't believe it. _Cosette_. Their old servant girl from Montfermeil. She had never expected to see Cosette again. But before she had any time to think about it, she a policeman coming - Inspector Javert! - and they all had to scatter. The old man hurried away too, which made Eponine curious, but before they rushed off, she saw him put one arm around Cosette's shoulders protectively and draw her in close. The sight of it was like a sharp pain to Eponine's chest. She couldn't imagine having a father like that.

If they all had to run, as they often did, she was supposed to meet up with her parents at the north bank of the river by the Pont d'Austerlitz. But Eponine didn't go there right away. After she'd run far enough, she slowed her steps and wandered the streets, while her mind reached back to a time that felt very far away, to their old inn at Montfermeil. How she'd loved her papa's noisy tavern parties there. How she'd loved her parents for letting her do whatever she pleased and never making her follow any rules. It had never occurred to her, then, that they would've disciplined her a bit if they really loved her.

Her memories of Cosette were vague, for Eponine had never paid much mind to her. Cosette's eyes had been sad and always downcast, but sometimes she would raise her head, her eyes wide and fearful, and Eponine remembered that her eyes were blue, like the girl she'd just seen. Cosette's hair had been stringy and always dirty, but Eponine guessed that if it had been washed and brushed, it would've been the same shade of gold as that young woman's hair.

"Cosette... how can it be?" she whispered to herself as she turned down another street. On the corner, a young whore about her age - thin and clearly desperate to be working during the daytime - was pulling the neckline of her dress down lower, and Eponine felt a shudder of pity.

Then, in her mind's eye, Eponine saw again the scene from the slums - the old man drawing Cosette to him, putting his arm around her shoulders - and her vision suddenly blurred with tears. She tried to brush them away, embarrassed and angry with herself, but the sudden rush of emotions was too strong and too confusing. She felt cold and clammy with that old guilt over how her parents had treated Cosette and how she had never thought to show her the least bit of kindness, either. But this time, it was accompanied by a new, blistering anger that Cosette had obviously fared so much better than she had, in the long years since the old man had taken her away. She wore fine clothes and had enough money to give alms, but what Eponine envied most was that she had a father who loved her. When had her father last been tender to her? Had he ever?

Eponine wiped her nose on the back of her hand. She was vaguely tempted to find out where Cosette and the old man lived, and ask him, "Why couldn't you have taken me away with you, too?" Or why couldn't her father have left her with the nuns at the hospital in Claye-Souilly? They had made her healthy again and mentioned sending her to their convent school. _"A little structure,"_ one of them had said, and Eponine scorned the idea at the time - but now, she longed for it. What a life she might have known.

* * *

But Eponine wasn't the only one who had noticed Cosette in the slums that day. Marius had seen her too, and he had been struck by her in quite a different way than Eponine. They were both still living at the Gorbeau House - Eponine couldn't be sure, but she thought it was the longest that her family had lived in one place since the inn - and when she returned there afterwards, he was standing outside with a dreamy, far-away look on his face that she had never seen there before. It was a sunny day, but when Eponine saw the look in his eyes, she suddenly felt as if a cloud had moved over the sun, casting her world into gloom.

Marius hadn't had as much time for Eponine lately. He had made friends with a group of students who called themselves the Amis de l'ABC and hung around the Café Musain, reading and talking of revolution. Eponine was too cynical to believe in revolution, and she thought Marius's new friends all fools for believing that they could bring about any change in France, much less the world.

But on Marius, the naïvety was endearing, even as he followed her up the stairs of the Gorbeau House, talking about Cosette all the way.

"Eponine, who was that girl, do you suppose?" he asked. "Could you... find her for me? I'll pay you for it."

"I don't want your money," she answered quickly, looking at him from the corner of her eyes. Her words were sharper than she meant them to be, and she immediately regretted that. She imagined Cosette with a sweet, flutey voice and genteel, soft-spoken words.

"But could you do it? Find out where she lives? I - " But Marius stopped short, and the light in his eyes dimmed. He went on, muttering more to himself than to Eponine, as if he had already forgotten that she was there, "No, I don't suppose you could. Paris is so big, how could anyone expect to find one girl?"

They had reached his floor of the Gorbeau House now, and he turned away from Eponine to go inside his room, without bidding her _adieu_ like he usually did. Eponine's heart seized up with a sudden certainty that if she didn't help him find Cosette, then she would never get his attention ever again, and that if he _didn't_ find Cosette, then he would spend even more time with his revolutionary friends to fill the hole that she left behind. He would bury himself in their plans for uprising until they all did something stupid and got buried for real.

So, scarcely believing what she was saying, she told him slowly, "I might be able to find her for you. I know my way around."

Marius spun around and stared at her with that impressed, wide-eyed look that he had given her when they first met. "Could you really?" he breathed, as if she had just offered him the entire Château de Versailles, and for one fleeting moment, she was happy to have made him so happy.

But the feeling didn't last - happiness never did last long for her, it seemed. Her bare feet angrily pounded the stairs up to her own floor, and she imagined Cosette with clean, soft feet in fine stockings and boots. And now, Cosette was going to have Marius, too.

"That just fucking figures," she said.


	11. First there's summer, then

This is the point in the story where Eponine mostly exists in the background of Marius and Cosette falling in love. As I said before, I want to give her a more independent storyline with this fic, which is why neither Marius or Cosette appear in this chapter. The musical implies that Eponine stopped living with her parents after she foiled her father's attempted robbery on Rue Plumet, but here, I made up my own reasons.

I know it's been a while since the last update, so if anyone is still actually reading this story, I hope you'll leave a review to let me know!

* * *

When Eponine was eighteen, living with her father got even worse. She wouldn't have believed that was possible, but it was. It was hard for her to pinpoint exactly when it started. It might've been the night when her father barged into her room, very late, and shook her awake. He always made her tend to any injuries he got during his robberies, and she thought that must be the case again tonight, but it wasn't.

"Hey, Eponine, get up," he said, and she knew from his smell and the slur of his words that he was very drunk, but his voice wasn't as rough as usual. He almost sounded as if he were happy-drunk, something that he hadn't been in a long time. "Can you still hold your liquor like you used to, my girl? Come on, get up and make your old man proud," and he dragged her out of her bed and into the kitchen.

Montparnasse and other members of the Patron-Minette gang were there, all gathered around the table, and before Eponine could react, her father sat down and pulled her into his lap. He wrapped one arm too tightly around her waist and picked up a full beer bottle with the other.

"Think you can drink this all in one go, my girl?" he asked, showing her the bottle. _My girl_. It had been a long time since he'd called her that, too. "I was just braggin' to the fellas 'bout how well you can hold your liquor, how I been givin' it to you since you were a little thing."

Eponine couldn't quite remember the last time she'd had any alcohol, and she'd been missing it. Drinking an entire bottle at once was well past her usual limit, and she knew that it might make her sick, but she decided that too much beer was better than none at all.

Her father suddenly pressed his lips close to her ear and whispered, "You do this, my girl, and Papa will give you a sou." His voice was almost sing-song, as if he were talking to a child, and Eponine wondered if she was dreaming.

She narrowed her eyes at her father for a moment, insulted that he still expected her to believe his word about anything, then looked at the beer bottle. She picked it up, tilted her head back, and remembered to pace herself.

She drank the entire bottle at once, but she didn't do it for her father's money at all. She didn't believe for one second that he was actually going to give it to her; it was just another lie, like every word out of his mouth now. She drank it because she wanted the beer, and because she knew that if she _didn't_ , if she embarrassed her father in front of the entire Patron-Minette, she would have to deal with his temper later. A hangover would be better than that.

She swayed on his lap, dizzy, as she set the empty bottle down on the table and wiped her mouth. The Patron-Minette clapped, and father kissed her and cheered much too loudly right in her ear, which made the dizziness even worse. The room began swimming... but then, suddenly, Eponine felt grounded again when her father squeezed her hand in his and pressed something into her palm. Something hard and flat, but... no, it couldn't be...

Eponine blinked down at it, not quite believing her eyes. Her father had actually done it, given her a sou for drinking the entire bottle. He had actually followed through and done what he'd said he would. She looked at it, still too surprised to speak, but he didn't notice her astonishment and just kissed her again, too close to her mouth. When had he last kept a promise to her?

 _You're dreaming this,_ Eponine told herself. _This is a dream._

But when she woke up the next morning, she still had the sou.

* * *

But what really made life with her father worse was when he suddenly began sleeping in Eponine's bed with her.

He wouldn't say a word on those nights, and Eponine was too nervous to. He would simply barge into her pantry-room off the kitchen and lie down on her narrow mattress with her, shoving roughly her against the wall if she didn't make room for him fast enough. She never went to sleep until she was sure that he'd fallen asleep first, and some endless nights, she would never go to sleep at all, and then she would have to snatch bits of rest later, curling up under a bridge or in an abandoned house, when she was supposed to be picking pockets.

She tried to avoid touching her father, but her mattress was too narrow for that, so she told herself that she could cope with it. She could cope with the scratch of his stubbly whiskers on her face and neck, with the hard pokes of his belt buckle on her belly and hips, with the uncomfortable, heavy weight of his body pressed against the length of hers. She laid awake, listening to him breathe, and told herself that she could cope with it, as long as they were both fully clothed, and besides, he did make her bed warmer.

One morning, her father blinked awake earlier than Eponine had expected. She hadn't sleep much that night and was lying awake in bed, reading from her Bible. The old book was now dangerously worn, stained and tattered around the edges. Last year, the binding of the spine had started to fall apart, and Eponine nicked a pot of glue and carefully glued it back together. It was still the only book she'd ever owned, but despite her efforts to take care of it over the years, it looked nothing like the clean, new Bible that the nuns had given her when she was little.

But then, Eponine knew that _she_ looked nothing like the happy, spoiled little girl she had been then - nothing at all.

"What're you wastin' yer time with that for?" her father asked, yawning, when he stirred awake next to her and saw her reading it. "It's all just made-up bullshit."

He had said this to her before, and Eponine usually shrugged and said nothing. This morning, though, some spirit had come to move her life, and she found herself answering him.

" _You_ had better hope so."

That made her father wake up fully, and he narrowed his eyes at her dangerously, but there was still a bit of jest in his voice when he asked, "Yeah? And why's that?"

"What do you think it says will happen to men like you after you die? I'll tell you." And without meaning to, she recited the first verse she could think of that described her father. "The cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the idolaters, and the liars - their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur."

Her father made a quick, fast motion, and Eponine was so surprised when he didn't strike her that it took a moment for her to realize that he'd snatched the Bible out of her hands. She was too late to him as he went into the kitchen and threw the book into the fire.

Eponine stood there, too stunned to move, watching the pages crumble and burn to ash. She had had that Bible for longer than she'd ever had anything, and even as she watched it burn, it seemed impossible that it could really be gone forever after all these years. She hadn't realized before now how much the book meant to her.

Her father grunted and mumbled, "Yeah, that shut you up," and her attention shifted back to him. Her astonishment flickered into a hot rage. She hadn't realized before now how much of the book she had memorized without even trying, and suddenly, verses were flowing from her mouth like a river that had broken its dam.

"The wicked will go down to the realm of the dead, and all the nations that forget God," and her father yelled at her to shut up, but she kept going. "They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord," and her father slapped her hard across the face, but her voice just rose louder.

"The one who sins in the one who will die!" she screamed in his face, and then he grabbed her arm and they were both striking at each other, their arms and legs flying. Eponine heard a bottle fall and smash onto the floor, but through all the commotion, she kept reciting every verse that sprang into her head. "The child shall not share the guilt of the parent!"

She didn't stop until her father finally opened the door to their rooms and threw her out, so hard that she crashed into the opposite wall. By then, Eponine was reciting from Revelations, from a part of the book that had been her favorite when she was little, because she'd loved being scared. "They were not allowed to kill them, but only to torture them for months, and the agony was like the sting of a scorpion."

"Stay the fuck out," her father growled at her, as he flung her outside, and somewhere in the back of her mind, Eponine understood that she could never come back from this.

She whirled around to face him and got in one last curse. "You shall seek death but shall not find it! You shall long to die, but death shall flee from you!"

Eponine was pleased to see, just before he slammed the door, that her father actually looked unnerved. There was real fear in his eyes beneath the anger, and she wondered if he was imagining himself burning in that lake of fire forever. It felt good to have that image as her last glimpse of him.

Then the door slammed shut, the harsh _bang_ of it echoing down the narrow hall of the boarding house, and Eponine was on her own - nowhere to turn, no one to go to. She had nothing but the clothes on her back and the sou that her father had given her, which she'd been careful to keep on her since that night. But she was unafraid. It made her feel strong to know that even though her Bible was gone, part of it was still there, inside her. Perhaps she had more inside her than she'd realized.


End file.
